Let us dispense with a very real truism, capitalism will outgrow itself and then cave in on itself; the only option left to it. How, well, what did capitalism initially do? It was a system by which one used monetary rationing to distribute goods. The monetary rations required usually denoted the object's scarcity; the more rations required the more scarce the item was, the fewer the less ect. We, for the most part, do not denote our rationing by this rule any longer; as scarcity is now a thing nearly divest of existence in the modern age of technology.
However, this is not entirely true. We, companies, can create scarcity; making 'limited time' offers or 'single printings' of things. This is not natural scarcity, this is intentional scarcity; usually used to promote the purchasing of said good, along with arbitrarily raising it's price for the arbitrary scarcity imposed upon it. This is fake scarcity and is in no way a positive outgrowth of the capitalist system; this is how you can tell the system is becoming over encumbered by it's own uselessness, it is now just pretending to be doing something useful or unique.
But another horror, a real one, is also taking place. Capitalism is creating real scarcity, in fact doing the very thing that it once was so useful at slowly ebbing away at, through the reality of climate change we are seeing an imposed form of scarcity unseen by the human race. Water, drinking water is becoming a scarce commodity world wide, yes some places have more than others and so that problem has not quite yet hit them, but the rest of the world is getting to know this very terrible fact. In America the fracking industry is poisoning many of the water-tables of the land, rendering water undrinkable in many towns and even small cities. The oil and coal industry is burning up fossil fuel, along with the fracking releasing methane (which is even worse than carbon dioxide), into the atmosphere that is leading to years long droughts that has rendered some parts of the middle east now uninhabitable; both due to the greed of the fossil fuel industry and the war industry, who keeps pushing for more bombing and intervening in even the most puny of problems.
The deforestation of our lands is leading to soil erosion and destabilization; leading to landslides and infertile land that is unable to hold crops. Our old growth and rain forests are being removed even though they supply the planet with valuable oxygen and medical treatment. Our oceans are acidifying at rates that are rendering some parts of the sea uninhabitable, and the acidification is killing off the plankton; which is the primary source of all of the world's oxygen, in fact, all of the plants on land only supply the world with around 30% of all oxygen, the rest is all plankton, and as of a year ago, 50% of all plankton are now dead due to water acidification. If the ocean dies, we die, if the old growth and rain forests die, we die.
Greed is literally destroying the planet, we are helping our own extinction, many other animals are now extinct now due to this; all of them dying out in the last hundred years following the industrial revolution. We are dying and we don't even know it. The mighty dollar is eating away at our very chances at future generations on this planet, and if we do not act soon, we will not even be able to adapt to save ourselves; as the planet will be uninhabitable.
Capitalism is killing us, yes, I do agree that if we could turn it towards more constructive things, renewable energy and sustainable behaviors, we could lengthen it's life; as the creation of the welfare state has done. Yet, I must ask, why do we cling so desperately to our outdated system of capitalism? It seems a terrible security blanket to hold to, as it exploits and abuses the very people in it's care. Why can we not grow out of this infantile prospective of commodity and arbitrary value? Why are we withholding what others need due to lack of monetary ration cards? Why are we so classist in our thinking and our desires? All of these things are not benefiting us or the planet; and the planet does not need us, but we need the planet. And so, I ask, how are environmental concerns not a concern to every person alive, and, why are we allowing our greed to trump our planet?
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